November's Litmos Newsletter - We LOVE the learning experience!

Wowhas it been a monster development month - as November should be when you're a tech company! Our team have dug it in working around the clock to bring you some key new enhancements, and rest assured there are still many more on the way. For now though, here's a teaser of what's rolling out to Litmos accounts this weekend:

Course building area - this has been completely re-vamped to make it more user-friendly

Upload multiple additional reference documents at a time - saves you lots of time

eCommerce purchase stats for courses available from now on - see which ones are your most popular courses

Hover your mouse over users who are assigned to courses and see a pop-up of profile information

View up-to-date course results in user pop-up (see image above)

Assign people to a course with the option to not send email notification

Team hierarchies are now visible when assigning courses to teams - now you know for sure that you have the right team

eCommerce is getting a makeover

To be totally honest, the eCommerce area had been neglected of any real upgrades for a wee while. So earlier this month we thought it was time to get started building the foundations of what's needed to be able to integrate with more payment providers so that you have more than just PayPal to choose from (who can drive us all up the wall at times!). We also thought it was time to snazz up the course listing pages a little with Facebook Like and Tweet buttons, improve the reliability of PayPal payments, make it possible to offer sign up to a free, zero $ course, and integrate with Google Analytics. For more info check out this blog post.

OpenSesame are a new company on the eLearning scene with a killer strategy - to be the 'iTunes' of the eLearning content world. Not only do they do all the legwork sourcing great courses and content to buy and sell on their website, they test it out in various Learning Management Systems to ensure that if a client needs the full package (content, delivery & tracking), they can give you some great reliable options. Knowing the number one barrier to moving ahead with Litmos is actually having content at-the-ready, we knew they were on to something good. I threw a few questions at them to find out what makes them tick:

What and who is OpenSesame? OpenSesame is the world's marketplace for buying and selling elearning courses. Our mission is to connect course creators and consumers directly in a marketplace where courses are easy for developers to publish and straighforward for companies to use. OpenSesame unlocks elearning for consumers by enabling them to read user reviews, evaluate authors' qualifications and purchase courses from multiple authors with no long-term commitments.

The OpenSesame team is based in beautiful Portland, Oregon where our team of 10 has worked with the buyers and sellers of elearning content since 2010.

Who are your main clients? OpenSesame has two types of clients: elearning consumers (our buyers) and elearning creators (our sellers). From the seller side, we are eager to work with course creators at all scales, from independent freelance Instructional Designers to large elearning consultancies. On the buyer side, in our initial stages of development we are targeting medium and large organizations with learning management systems in place.

Are you focused on a US or global audience? Short term we are focused on developing a library of English-language content and marketing it to English-language consumers. We plan to develop content libraries in additional languages as we build global connections in the elearning community.

How does your website work? Our goal is to make buying and selling elearning content as simple as using eBay or iTunes. Buyers and sellers can access the OpenSesame marketplace and we encourage content creators to create a profile and begin uploading their courses to reach customers worldwide. We also encourage buyers to browse our library of courses, classified in four categories: technical, business skills, compliance and safety. Our marketplace design ensures that courses remain securely on OpenSesame's servers while playing directly in any LMS. Learning and Training Directors can browse our marketplace, read course reviews, learn about course authors and purchase as many seats or site licenses as they need. OpenSesame connects buyers and sellers transparently, empowering both groups to find the partners they need.

What kind of feedback have you been getting so far? (I think I know the answer to this - it all seems to be very positive so far as I've seen!) The feedback has been great! In the past several weeks, we have worked hard to showcase the OpenSesame marketplace to as many fresh sets of eyes as possible at DevLearn10 and through countless demos. We've also received great suggestions to improve the next iterations of the site, and we welcome more! It's clear that course creators are looking for new ways to connect their products with elearning consumers, and we are eager to fill that niche.

Thanks OpenSesame! You can follow them here on Twitter: OpenSesameNow.

All the best wishes to those celebrating a US Thanksgiving this week - bring on December!